Caution: Set Prayer Zone
That people from around the world are being drawn to places that practice common prayer is encouraging, but this movement needs to be looked at with caution [“Learning the Ancient Rhythms of Prayer,” Jan. 8].Common prayer without the Holy Spirit could lead to praying by rote. If we do this, the life that comes with praying in the Spirit will be missing.
God gave his people fresh manna every morning when they were in the desert. His mercies are new every morning. His Word is alive, sharper than any double-edged sword.
This freshness is what should come forth in daily prayer.
Life and energy are given to our days, and when we pray in the Spirit we are giving our Lord’s words back to him.Mary V. NelsonSt. Louis, MissouriWhy was it that Arthur Paul Boers’s genuine attempt to convince us of the importance of this new discipline of prayer could only be made at the expense of criticizing—albeit mildly—the evangelical practice of devotions?
I understand that for many, choosing the daily office tradition helps to reestablish or even discover an enjoyable communion with God, so I can only rejoice.
If I read the Bible correctly, however, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with praying “prayers that are ad-hoc and self-directed, made up along the way, according to the mood, and not paying attention to the Christian year.”
In fact, for Jesus and the early Christians, praying often was instantaneous or motivated by immediate circumstances.Aurelian BoticaCincinnati, OhioI read with interest and delight your cover story and sidebars on evangelicals’ growing interest in the daily office and other related liturgical traditions.
I am a United Methodist pastor and small-church consultant who’s always found the daily office to be a central resource for prayer and scriptural meditation. No other resource that I know of so naturally and easily combines prayer (both personal and communal) with Scripture.
Yet the current evangelical interest in the daily office is not a new phenomenon. Despite its liberal Protestant reputation in the last century, the Methodist movement was birthed by John Wesley’s wedding evangelical pietism with Anglo-Catholic sacramental theology and liturgical practice.Randy BeelerChriesman, Liberty, and Milano United Methodist Churches Caldwell, TexasThough many people are obviously enthusiastic about praying a liturgy, for years it was liturgy that kept me from God. When I finally realized that I could relate to God without liturgy, that was a profound spiritual breakthrough.Pete UnsethDuncanville, TexasI am a Roman Catholic and have been praying the Liturgy of the Hours (the office) for many years. Its beauty and its grounding in daily prayer is a blessing; I cannot imagine my life without it.Mark PlaissLaPorte, IndianaHip-Hopping Away
Bobby hill’s remark in “Hip-Hop Kingdom Come” [Jan. 8] that “We often confuse the content and the wineskins … We should be conservative fundamentalists when it comes to content and liberals when it comes to containers” assumes that it is possible to separate the container from the content. Neil Postman’s brilliant book Amusing Ourselves to Death argues persuasively that it is not.Ironically, Jesus’ wineskin metaphor suggests the same thing. Jesus’ point was precisely that wine and wineskins have to match. The medium often, if not always, is the message. How we say something is an intrinsic part of what we say.
This does not mean that hip-hop is necessarily evil. Hip-hop may be a legitimate “container” for the gospel or it may not. But if Christians are going to “baptize” hip-hop and use it to spread the gospel, they must answer questions about the suitability of their chosen “container,” rather than evading such questions by flourishes of pragmatist rhetoric.Edwin TaitDurham, North CarolinaThe articles on “Christian rap” only reveal the disgusting degrees of compromise that are now being accepted and promoted in Christendom.
The question I have for Gospel Gangstaz, P.O.D., and their ilk is this: “Why, if you say you are going to heaven, do you have the same mean, indifferent, and cynical look of those who are going to hell? Where is the joy of the Lord?”Roy E. KnutesonFort Collins, ColoradoHere is an amazing thing: White suburban youth, including evangelical Christians, are eager to get “with it”—the hip-hop-nation culture, that is. It’s a whole new cultural phenomenon that has burst upon the scene with brash, defiant, in-your-face rap music and its own dissonant, oversized clothing to match.
I have always been astounded by the baffling rationale of white evangelical Christian radio stations that carefully avoid playing too much, if any, pure black gospel music so as not to offend their majority white conservative support base. They feel they must first de-ghettoize, sanitize, and “white evangelicalize” it.
By contrast, today’s (hip-hopping) young people aren’t so squirmy when it comes to feasting at the musical smorgasbord buffet served up over the secular airwaves. To those who object to Christian hip-hop, I ask, whatever happened to “becoming all things to all people that by all means we might win some”?Jim OffuttCanton, IllinoisPerspectives on Palestine
“The Peace Regress” [Jan. 8] certainly did give a different perspective on the peace process in the Middle East.At the same time, the Jan. 8 U.S. News & World Report says to the Palestinians, “Get a state and build it, make it work, bid farewell to the radicalism of ‘national liberation movements,’ tell your people truths they had been spared, train the ‘children of the stones’ for a new, demanding economic world—or persist with the old tricks and consolations” [“The Endless Claim,” p. 27].
It is not usually the case that a secular magazine prints the view of a majority of Christians in the United States, and CT prints an article with the minority view.Thomas MitchellLakewood, ColoradoJonathan Kuttab charges that Israeli “Authorities dismissed good ideas and valid actions … while excusing truly objectionable behavior” and that “Israel clearly violated international law.” He does not, however, cite one specific instance or give any evidence of truthfulness of these allegations.
I also had to laugh about his objection that “average Israelis felt they were making concessions every time they turned over properties.”
For someone who is in control of property to hand over that control is a concession, and to do so without something in return—in this case, peace, safety, and control of the citizenry—does not seem to be asking much. And the demands for “all at once” turnover completely ignore what happened the last time that occurred in the area—just over 40 years ago, when Great Britain pulled out of Israel.
Then Kuttab falls into the same tired arguments: The land should be ours by ancestral right; the Palestinians are innocent and tired of being stepped on, ignored, and having to answer to Israel. How does that apply to the Arab and Palestinian nations’ treatment of Israel as a nation, working and warring for so many years to wipe it out?
I don’t seem to recall any great movements to wipe out the Palestinian people, and nowhere near the scale of those propagated against the people of Israel throughout history. Are the Israelis supposed to be trusting, happy, and eager to hand over their land with no guarantees from a people who seem eager to wipe them from the face of the Earth?
I’m sorry Mr. Kuttab, but your arguments did not seem to hold up—not legally, emotionally, or spiritually.George BurnashOxnard, CaliforniaI hope that as evangelical Christians consider “The Peace Regress” we will ask ourselves on what basis we can oppose the most basic human rights for Palestinian Arabs when we demand the same rights for all other peoples of the world.
Perhaps we will also ask why we should oppose persecution and ethnic cleansing in such places as Kosovo, Sudan, and South Africa and then support the same thing in Palestine. What does this inconsistency do for our Christian testimony?
Pious platitudes like “God gave that land to the Jews” are not satisfactory. Christ predicted that the Jewish state would be taken away and destroyed as a divine act of God’s judgment. This was fulfilled by the Romans in a.d. 70. Nothing in the New Testament says or hints that Christians have a duty to help restore that Jewish state which God destroyed, or to displace those who hold legal title to that land 1,900 years later.Thomas WilliamsonChicago, IllinoisElection Sovereignty
In your editorial on election 2000 [“The Evil of Two Lessers,” Jan. 8], I was surprised that you made no reference to the sovereignty of God in the outcome.If we believe, as Daniel did, that God is the Lord of history and that “he determines the course of world events; he removes kings [presidents] and sets others on the throne” (Dan. 2:21), then we must also believe he was involved in the course of events which took place in the election.
As much as we may be unhappy with what took place and how the two candidates conducted themselves, at the same time we must marvel at how God orchestrated this whole scenario in a way that no human being would have predicted in advance.David R. ChristensonLynnwood, WashingtonPlayer Prayer
The article on Trent Dilfer by Jeff Sellers [“The Glory of the Ordinary,” Jan. 8] was an excellent challenge to all of us who may at times assume that the “unique” demands of our profession excuse us from living the way Christ calls us to live. It has been a long time since a professional football player has had the courage to consider humility a virtue.Several marquee professional athletes recently have gone beyond just giving God credit for their own successful play and have publicly suggested that God may also have been responsible for their opponent’s errors.
We all lose when that type of theology emerges from the ranks of professional sports. This article, however, is a step in the right direction. Perhaps someday we’ll even read an article about the Trent Dilfers in the world before their career is “reignited.”Doug MillerDillsburg, PennsylvaniaCT interviewed Dilfer before he became a starter, and the article went to press before the NFL playoffs began.—Eds.
Football player Trent Dilfer’s postgame prayer, “God, we want to pray for the people who have been injured and ask that you would heal them, and as well ask that you would work in their lives through their injuries,” seems odd, considering that these football players make a career out of violent physical combat.
Perhaps the best way these football players could answer their own prayers would be to hit their opponents more softly, or simply get out of the way when charged. If they are truly concerned about injured players, they ought to encourage one another to find a less violent line of work.Al HsuDowners Grove, IllinoisMcEntyre on Media
Marilyn Chandler McEntyre misses the point in “Community, Not Commodity” [Jan. 8].While we may decry the negative effects the media have on our culture, doing so changes nothing. Seeing video cameras as an intrusion on community, rather than an extension of it, is wrong-headed.
Such thinking has succeeded in marginalizing Christians. Learning to use the media correctly will satisfy most of McEntyre’s concerns and at the same time allow us to communicate with a larger community.Tom NashProfessor of Communication Biola University La Mirada, CaliforniaAmericans United Responds
In his review of Stephen L. Carter’s God’s Name in Vain: The Wrongs and Rights of Religion in Politics [“The Culture of Co-opted Belief?” Jan. 8], Terry Mattingly repeats a serious factual error that Carter made in the book.Carter wrote that as of the fall of 1999, Americans United for Separation of Church and State had reported more than 30 churches to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for endorsing Republicans for political office but only one church for endorsing a Democrat.
In fact, as of the fall of 1999, Americans United had reported 27 houses of worship and religious nonprofits to the IRS for violating federal tax law by endorsing candidates. Eighteen of those complaints were for endorsing Republicans, seven for endorsing Democrats, one for endorsing a third-party candidate, and one for endorsing a candidate in a nonpartisan election.
Carter has agreed to correct this error in future editions of his book.
Our efforts in this area are nonpartisan, and we strive for fairness. The vast majority of churches willingly obey federal law governing partisan political activity. We believe all should do so.Barry W. LynnExecutive Director, Americans United for Separation of Church and State Washington, D.C.CT regrets the error.—Eds.
On Miracles
My first impression on reading Chris Lutes’ “First Church of Signs and Wonders” (Jan. 8) was that he has never experienced a miracle. He seems to say that miracles are necessary sometimes to boost our faith, implying that those of mature faith have graduated from the need for miracles.To experience a miracle is very humbling and awesome. You forget the miracle because you are awed by the holiness and goodness of God. You find yourself thinking, “I never want to sin again,” and you are encouraged there is nothing you cannot face with such an awesome, loving God on your side.Roy MayfieldCarnation, WashingtonKinkade Portrait
After reading your December issue, I was disturbed by your presentation of Thomas Kinkade and his work [“The Kinkade Crusade,” Dec. 4].Not only the article but also the editorial, “The Artist as Prophet,” were grossly unfair to him.
In the main article, a lot of space was devoted to describing Modernistic art, which any Christian knows appeals to the base elements of society. But the article goes on to imply that even though Kinkade’s work shows a perfect world, his viewers better not even imagine that there could be such a place.
As for the Christian artists cited in the editorial who were “deeply divided by the suggestion that they had a responsibility to the community,” it sounds like Cain asking God if he was his brother’s keeper. Have they never read the New Testament and how Christians are to be responsible for one another?
Furthermore, Kinkade has not called himself a prophet. He is just a Christian doing what he believes is his calling to do. The statement that “From Kinkade’s rhetoric, readers could easily conclude that his way is the only way for a Christian artist in our time” is grossly biased and narrow, as is the criticism that the lack of people in his pictures is somehow unreal.
Christians are drawn to beauty and light and truth. I don’t know of anything produced by Kinkade, but I do admire his work very much because it reminds me that the world will be perfect someday. Who wants to go through life only looking at the mean, the bad, and the ugly?
I hope that you can find it in yourself to be more charitable to a fellow Christian.Shirley GasperIndianapolis, IndianaOn Letter-Rage
Gentle writer, get thou over it [“Get Thou Over It,” Dec. 4].Douglas G. BellCharlotte, North CarolinaBrief letters are welcome. They may be edited for space and clarity and must include the writer’s name and address if intended for publication. Due to the volume of mail, we cannot respond personally to each letter. Write to Letters, Christianity Today, 465 Gundersen Drive, Carol Stream, IL 60188; fax: 630.260.8428; e-mail: cteditor@christianitytoday.com.
